"It's important we work with ordinary customers, real people," Coelingh said. "It's not enough to just have test engineers driving cars around on a track — we want to see how people use a self driving car, do they feel comfortable, do they feel safe."

The trial is part of Volvo's mission to make cars deathproof by 2020. As Coelingh put it, "no one should be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo vehicle" four years from now.

To make that vision a reality, Volvo has been rolling out semi-autonomous features in all of its vehicles. For example, the latest Volvo S90 includes Pilot Assist, which is a feature that enables the car to drive itself up to 80 miles per hour.

The DriveMe program represents how Volvo is taking a "step to a truly automated car where the driver can do something else," Coelingh said.

Volvo's XC90 is loaded with semi-autonomous features, like the ability to park itself. Volvo

Volvo will only test the cars on public roads they've mapped out and deem safe enough for testing. As such, volunteers can only lease a car for testing if they regularly commute on the roads Volvo selects.

The XC90 will still have a steering wheel so volunteers can drive it regularly. The car will ask the "drivers" to turn on autonomous mode when it has reached the testing site and will ask them to take over again once they leave that area.

Coelingh said it's key to test the driverless cars in different countries because road conditions vary so drastically.

"If you want to have self-driving cars available all around the world, we will have to understand the exceptional situations from around the world," Coelingh said. "If a self-driving car works well in Gothenburg that doesn't mean you can safely drive the car in Beijing or in London."

Volvo selected China because it's known for its heavy traffic congestion. Coelingh said there are no official plans to test cars in other countries, but that in principle Volvo "will have to learn in the future how autonomous cars work in different traffic environments."

"There's way too many people getting killed or injured on the roads in China — we believe we can do something about that by developing and deploying self driving cars," Coelingh said.